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Toronto's ethnocultural communities before 1945

King of Kensington

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Yes, we hear that "everybody was from the British Isles" until 1945 (isn't that one of Toronto's urban myths?) and certainly Toronto was not as multicultural as New York and Chicago in the early 20th century. Still the city was impacted by continental European immigration. Note that there more people with continental European roots in Toronto then there were in the western gateway city of Winnipeg, although they represented a smaller percentage of the population.

The Jewish population increased fifteenfold between 1901 and 1931 (from 3,000 to 45,000, or 7.2% of the population). Italians were the second largest group, representing 3% of the population. Other Europeans, such as Poles and Ukrainians arrived as well, and the city's first Chinatown emerged in this period.

By the 1920s, most of the city's "ethnic" groups lived south of Bloor St. between University Ave. and Dovercourt Rd. Certainly this west-central area was a multicultural island in what was not the diverse city we know today. Most visible was the garment district along Spadina and Kensington Market (then known as the "Jewish Market"); Little Italy on College Street was also established around this time.

Chinatown was located in "the Ward" about where City Hall is today (and the community was displaced to build City Hall in the 1960s, and relocated northwest to today's Chinatown). The Chinese community replaced the Jews and Italians that moved westward around WWI.

Census data is available at the ward level in 1931:

https://ia600303.us.archive.org/3/items/1931981931B401934engfra/1931981931B401934engfra.pdf

Here's a map of the wards:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._map_1964.PNG/300px-Toronto_ward_map_1964.PNG

Ward 4 (University to Bathurst) was more than 30% Jewish and Ward 5 (Bathurst to Dovercourt) was 18%, altogether this area contained 82% of the city's Jewish population. In addition to being the heart of the Jewish community (as it contained Spadina/Kensington), ward 4 was also home to the majority of the city's Finns, Czechs and Slovaks, Hungarians and Blacks. Ward 5 was home to Little Italy and had the largest Italian population in the city, but there also some Italian concentrations on the city's northwest fringe as well. A majority of Poles and Ukrainians lived in wards 4 and 5, were centered around Queen St. on both sides of Bathurst.

The Chinese population, as noted, was located near City Hall; 80% lived in ward 3.

The city's Greek population, meanwhile, was located further east in ward 2, east of Jarvis St. This perhaps explains why the Greek population later moved in an eastward direction.

See also my blog post containing some maps of various ethnic communities:

http://southofbloorstreet.blogspot.ca/2015/09/torontos-ethnic-communites-before-wwii.html

@wild goose chase
 
Interesting stuff.

Yes, we hear that "everybody was from the British Isles" until 1945 (isn't that one of Toronto's urban myths?) and certainly Toronto was not as multicultural as New York and Chicago in the early 20th century. Still the city was impacted by continental European immigration. Note that there more people with continental European roots in Toronto then there were in the western gateway city of Winnipeg, although they represented a smaller percentage of the population.

Actually, I haven't really heard people in daily life claim that everyone was British-origin before 1945 specifically. I do think that the 1960s and 1970s do get some mention of when Toronto supposedly lost its Victorian uptight character, but I hadn't really thought of Toronto as characteristically British in ethnic origin, at least not in particular contrast to other Canadian cities (people also talk about how British parts of BC, like Victoria or Vancouver itself used to be, and how many there are descended from later British immigrants rather than "settlers" from eastern Canada).

I think if anyone was aware enough about Toronto in the earlier half of the 20th century to talk about that time period, they probably may have heard of some of the ethnic European communities such as little Italy, as well as the Christie Pits riot, which shows the ethnic tensions at the time, and also many Torontonians may be famously aware that a Jewish-Canadian born in Toronto, co-created the character Superman.

One thing that stuck out when looking at the "race" stats was not only how the British Isles origins were considered separate from "Europeans" but also how the category (Hebrew -- I assume that based on the number of 45, 000 or so, included all Jewish people, regardless of place of birth, origin etc.) was considered European, but the Syrians were considered Asiatic alongside the Chinese and Japanese.

Also, another thing I wonder about is since the "races" seemed to only report single origins, how did people report mixed-race (or even if at the time, mixed European origins). Did people just identify with one? I can't imagine that so many people only had a single origin by the 20th century, since there had to be people mixed between different immigrant/settler groups. The unspecified number is not too big so I assume most identified with one "race" among the list.

Also, if any Torontonians then were descended from Americans, I wonder how the ethnicity identification would work -- a German-American would just say German etc. or a descendant of the United Empire Loyalists would think of themselves as British?
 
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I'm also curious if more of the ancestry of Torontonians of British Isles descent comes from the time of say the United Empire Loyalists, or other colonial settlers, or from later immigrants from the UK (say, post-Confederation). It's interesting to think of times when British accents and the more American-like Canadian accents of the Loyalists could be heard side-by-side in Toronto, and I wonder how the differing shares of the two changed through time.
 
It would be from 19th and 20th century immigration. Immigration from the British Isles in Upper Canada by the mid-19th century dwarfed that of the Loyalists and "late Loyalists."

Loyalist ancestry is more common in rural eastern Ontario and parts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
 
I'm also assuming that there wasn't much immigration from the US to Toronto after the last of the late Loyalists, when compared to UK or European immigration to the city. Also, perhaps not that much internal migration either from other provinces (though the Anglo Montrealer thing in the 1970s looms large in our city's collective memory). Makes sense that rural Ontario and the Maritimes are more "old stock" or colonial in ancestry though.

For some reason, the Loyalist waves seems to loom large in Canadian memory, perhaps because it distinguishes us from Americans. Though the Loyalists and earlier British colonial settlers are the reason we talk like Americans accent-wise rather than Brits, even if more Brits came later by immigration. Come to think of it, as an aside, are Canadians or Americans more likely to have colonial ancestry? I know in general cities have more recent immigrants and less colonial ancestry and that holds for both countries. I have a feeling that apart from Quebecois or Acadians, proportionally much fewer Canadians trace their roots to the 17th or 18th century than Americans, but then again the US also got many large waves of 19th and 20th century immigration.
 
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The "actual" Loyalists were pretty small. The so-called Late Loyalists, those who came until right before 1812, I believe outnumbered them 4 to 1. Governor John Graves Simcoe hoped that there were still a lot of Loyalists south of the border, but they pretty much came for the land not out of loyalty to the Crown, and they had "democratic" tendencies that concerned the elites.
 
I'm also assuming that there wasn't much immigration from the US to Toronto after the last of the late Loyalists, when compared to UK or European immigration to the city. Also, perhaps not that much internal migration either from other provinces (though the Anglo Montrealer thing in the 1970s looms large in our city's collective memory). Makes sense that rural Ontario and the Maritimes are more "old stock" or colonial in ancestry though.

For some reason, the Loyalist waves seems to loom large in Canadian memory, perhaps because it distinguishes us from Americans. Though the Loyalists and earlier British colonial settlers are the reason we talk like Americans accent-wise rather than Brits, even if more Brits came later by immigration. Come to think of it, as an aside, are Canadians or Americans more likely to have colonial ancestry? I know in general cities have more recent immigrants and less colonial ancestry and that holds for both countries. I have a feeling that apart from Quebecois or Acadians, proportionally much fewer Canadians trace their roots to the 17th or 18th century than Americans, but then again the US also got many large waves of 19th and 20th century immigration.

It would be higher in the US than English Canada. The US South was barely impacted at all by the great waves of immigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries, except in certain pockets (like New Orleans, parts of Texas and "border cities" like Baltimore).
 
I'm also curious if more of the ancestry of Torontonians of British Isles descent comes from the time of say the United Empire Loyalists, or other colonial settlers, or from later immigrants from the UK (say, post-Confederation). It's interesting to think of times when British accents and the more American-like Canadian accents of the Loyalists could be heard side-by-side in Toronto, and I wonder how the differing shares of the two changed through time.
I came to Canada from the UK in 1976, as a five year of English parents. I've not really thought of myself as being of British-descent, and would more identify as English. I remember bringing my girlfriend of the time to my family in the UK and when she asked them the difference between British and English, they told her British is a holder of a British (or UK) passport or a resident of Britain, while English refers to them, i.e. pre-multicult British white folks. I thought at the time that was a little mean spirited and unwelcoming, but then I suppose if ten million Argentineans (random choice) moved to Japan (another random choice) and began to change the otherwise mostly homogeneous culture, some traditional Japanese would get upset.
 
I came to Canada from the UK in 1976, as a five year of English parents. I've not really thought of myself as being of British-descent, and would more identify as English. I remember bringing my girlfriend of the time to my family in the UK and when she asked them the difference between British and English, they told her British is a holder of a British (or UK) passport or a resident of Britain, while English refers to them, i.e. pre-multicult British white folks. I thought at the time that was a little mean spirited and unwelcoming, but then I suppose if ten million Argentineans (random choice) moved to Japan (another random choice) and began to change the otherwise mostly homogeneous culture, some traditional Japanese would get upset.

It seems like people in the UK differ in terms of whether or not they identify as British, or more specifically as English, Scottish or Welsh in terms of their identity. According to what surveys say, it seems like younger people, people in the big city as well as ethnic minorities (eg. people of Black or Asian descent in the UK) tend to prefer the British identity, while in other places people prefer the more regional identity.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24302914

But it seems like outside the UK, a lot of people (eg. many Americans, Canadians, Australians etc.) talk about "the British" collectively a lot, rather than "the English, Scottish, Welsh" specifically etc.
 
It would be higher in the US than English Canada. The US South was barely impacted at all by the great waves of immigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries, except in certain pockets (like New Orleans, parts of Texas and "border cities" like Baltimore).

Western Canada was settled quite a bit later than Western United States ("the Last Best West", after the US frontier was "closed"), but then again neither region probably had that many pre- 19th century settlers to begin with.
I would imagine that aside from the post-1960s wave of immigration which probably forms a greater proportion of Toronto's population than most US cities (except maybe somewhere like Miami), Toronto would be comparable to many Midwestern or Eastern US cities in proportion of people that came through immigration from the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries, except with more representation from the British Isles rather than continental Europe than similar US cities.

Also, what's the deal with the seemingly smaller proportion both from other Canadian cities to Toronto, as well as between Canadian cities, that come from internal migration than the American counterparts? I hear of lots of US cities and regions like the Sunbelt that seemingly owe or owed their growth, either historically or now, much more to internal migration rather than immigration but Toronto not so much. Is it just that the US has much more diversified regions economically, politically, culturally etc. that are attractive and that people want to move between them? We don't have that, but we also don't have something like Toronto (or I suppose Montreal back in the day) being a big internal "metropole" or primate city to Canadians, like what London is to the UK or Paris is to France.
 
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The US South exploded in growth after the effects of the Civil War.

Saying you're "British" is like saying you're "Canadian"--meaningless unless you're "new stock" to use an unPC term.

You could be Irish, Scots, Scots Irish, Welsh or English but never British if your family roots are in Great Britain.
 
The US South exploded in growth after the effects of the Civil War.

The growth and demographic transformation of the South (as part of the sunbelt) occurred after WWII.

At the turn of the 20th century, the percentage foreign born was 1% or less in Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi etc.

https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0081/twps0081.pdf

Even today much of the South isn't that much more diverse except in in certain pockets: Virginia, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, Florida etc.
 
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Western Canada was settled quite a bit later than Western United States ("the Last Best West", after the US frontier was "closed"), but then again neither region probably had that many pre- 19th century settlers to begin with.
I would imagine that aside from the post-1960s wave of immigration which probably forms a greater proportion of Toronto's population than most US cities (except maybe somewhere like Miami), Toronto would be comparable to many Midwestern or Eastern US cities in proportion of people that came through immigration from the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries, except with more representation from the British Isles rather than continental Europe than similar US cities.

One difference is German mass immigration to cities wasn't really "a thing" in Canada, like it was in the US. German immigration to Canada was mostly to rural areas (and in the Prairie provinces in the early 20th century it was mostly Volga Germans, few came directly from Germany). In contrast cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Buffalo received very large numbers of German immigrants. Today a plurality in Pennsylvania and the Midwest are of German ancestry.
 
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One difference is German mass immigration to cities wasn't really "a thing" in Canada, like it was in the US. German immigration to Canada was mostly to rural areas (and in the Prairie provinces in the early 20th century it was mostly Volga Germans, few came directly from Germany). In contrast cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Buffalo received very large numbers of German immigrants. Today a plurality in Pennsylvania and the Midwest are of German ancestry.
Quite a number of Germans immigrated to Waterloo Region, where communities such as Berlin (later renamed Kitchener), New Hamburg, and Breslau (named after the German name for Wroclaw) were settled.

German immigration to the United States was so prevalent that German is the most common ancestry in the largest number of counties. Michigan has a number of German communities, such as Frankenmuth (which has an attraction themed as a German town).
 
German immigration to the United States was so prevalent that German is the most common ancestry in the largest number of counties. .
An oft forgotten part of history is that a good portion of the British army fighting the American rebellion/revolution were of German (pre 1870s unification) descent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans_in_the_American_Revolution

I imagine it was not uncommon for many of these German mercenaries to either stay behind or return after Britain's defeat.
 

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